Thursday, May 26, 2011

In Which I Am A Food Snob

So it's finally springtime in the Pacific Northwest, and you all know what this means in my household.

Yep. It's food snobbery time.

We participate in a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program year round and absolutely love it, but in the winter time after a while we get really, really tired of root vegetables and apples. So when spring hits our CSA suddenly there are all these wonderful fresh greens, asparagus, rhubarb, and (soon!) strawberries and about the same time our weekend farmer's market opens up five minutes from my house. Somehow the big influx of ridiculously tasty freshly-picked produce goes to my head. That's when I go a little nuts and suddenly start announcing the dinners I make to Jeremy like I'm running a fancy restaurant instead of slapping something together before roller derby practice.

Like tonight, for example. Tonight I made a mixed greens salad with smoked salmon, rosemary-dill sheep's milk cheese, apricots, sunflower seeds and spiced blackberry vinaigrette, served with a slice of fresh honey wheat berry bread and garlic butter. With the exception of the apricots, everything was either from the CSA, farmer's market or homemade. It took me all of ten minutes because everything was already in our fridge, which didn't stop me from being tremendously proud of it and expecting wild praise for my cooking genius. Genius, I tell you. I chopped things! And I put them in a bowl! Shouldn't I get some sort of award for that?

I know from experience that I will continue to announce the meals I make to Jeremy in capital letters until about July, which is when the CSA produce starts really outstripping what I can cook and instead of being thrilled about having so many fresh, tasty things in the house I end up in a cooking frenzy once a week, attempting to cram produce into as many dishes as possible and foisting said dishes off on other people so I can make more room in the fridge for the new delivery of fruits and veggies. Almost all of these dishes will contain some form of summer squash, including the brownies. I will not tell the people I am foisting the brownies off on that they contain zucchini.

So if I show up on your doorstep around mid-July, consider yourself warned.
~Jess

2 comments:

Yes, please. (With regard to the offer to show up on our doorstep mid-July.) I don't care what's in the brownies, as long as it's mostly legal and there's an excess of chocolate.

Our CSA only does summer and we have yet to start getting our share, but you'll know when we do by the fact that our skins turn a deep ruddy color from all the beet consumption. Ah, roasted beet salad.

About The Author

I'm Connor's Mom. That pretty much explains everything. I mean, raising the epicenter of cuteness in the universe is tough, but it has its moments, all right.
I should probably mention that Connor has a submicroscopic, subtelomeric unbalanced translocation 46xy der t(1)(1;15)(q42;q26.2)-- an extremely rare chromosomal disorder. He keeps me on my toes!